


With Teeth

by little_murmaider



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Cryptids, Gen, M/M, Mild Gore, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt, mild violence, spooky stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-07-08 00:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 4,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15919095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_murmaider/pseuds/little_murmaider
Summary: A curious collection of tales about monsters, magic, and madness.





	1. Murderface, Cryptid

**Author's Note:**

> These were [originally posted on Tumblr](https://little-murmaider.tumblr.com/) as responses to a non-human prompt meme. Hooray!

Murderface hated Atlantic City. He hated the trash beach. He hated the stale-cigarette stank of the casinos. He hated the hoards of elderly, holding tight to their oxygen tanks as they sank coin after coin into the chiming, unforgiving slot machines. Most of all, he hated being dragged along for his grandmother’s monthly sojourn to that glittering turd of a city. She spent whole weekends at the Blackjack table with her cackling Bingo buddies, throwing back whiskey and throwing her money away. She kept close watch on Murderface, but when she got on a roll her attention waned, and he could slip outside with little notice.  
  
One night he wandered onto the beach, a tear in his boot allowing passage for a steady stream of sand. He clunked along, bored, aggravated, the flashing lights of the casinos hurting his eyes. He found his way beneath the looming Steel Pier. Standing beneath a boardwalk of fabulous amusements he was not allowed to partake in infuriated him. Picking up a piece of driftwood, he swung wildly at the beams holding the pier aloft, kicking, screaming, lashing out, nothing safe from his tantrum. He expected some attention for his effort–a scolding from a beach patrolman, a scoff from a family of fat tourists,  _something_ –but he heard nothing. He paused. He heard  _nothing_. The rush of the ocean? Gone. The music from the casinos? Vanished. The caterwauling of boardwalk workers desperate to make a buck? Silent.  
  
The ground beneath his feet became firm. The columns surrounding him disappeared. In their place were towering white cedars, arching over him like the domes of a cathedral. From every direction he saw vines, trees, moss, soil. Then, from within the black maw of the forest, he saw eyes. Red eyes. The creature did not budge, but became visible to Murderface in pieces, as though it were willing itself into existence. Hoofs. Wings. Horns. Claws. It rocked back to its hind legs and rose, menacingly, dwarfing Murderface with its massive height.   
  
Its mouth did not move, but in his skull, Murderface heard a voice ask, “ _ **Do you know what hell sounds like, little boy**_?” Its mouth fell open, exposing rows and rows of serrated, glinting teeth, and from it came a shriek that cut Murderface down to the soul.

The next moment he was on his back, soaking wet, a lifeguard pressing his chest and begging him to breath, his grandmother on her knees in the sand beside him, wailing, “He wasch only gone five minutesch!” 


	2. Skwisgaar, Mermaid

Toki couldn’t set sail until nightfall, when he could make his escape under the cover of darkness. The waters had been calm when he embarked, but a storm descended fast. The tempest battered his tiny boat and in the chaos he could not find the shore. A wave struck the bow like a fist, and Toki was launched into the roiling, inky ocean.   
  
The torrent was relentless. Toki scrambled for the surface, but in each direction saw nothing but endless blackness. His lungs ached–he had not drawn a deep enough breath before he was plunged. He opened his mouth to scream and choked on salt water. He had not found an escape; only another place to die. Before darkness swallowed him completely, he felt a pair of deft hands seize him at the waist, and then nothing.  
  
His senses came back to him slowly. Sunshine warming his face. The crunch of sand against his skin. Waves lapping gently at his feet. And music. The most beautiful music he ever heard.   
  
The music ceased as he opened his eyes. Beside him was a man, plucking at a lyre, the sun haloing his golden hair like a crown. Setting aside his instrument he hovered over him, uncomfortably close. Toki’s nerves settled as the man’s expression came into focus, a sort of child-like fascination. Cool fingers made exploratory tracks across his face–down the bridge of his nose, into the dip in his chin.   
  
“I thoughts all humans was supposed to bes ugly,” he murmured. “Buts  _yous_. Yous ams.”  
  
He smiled, and Toki thought his heart would burst.  
  
“ _Magnificent.”_  
  



	3. Pickles, Phoenix

He was hot all the time. And uncomfortable. And alone. And bored, so fucking bored. He wanted to gripe about how his veins were livewires and he couldn’t fit through doors anymore because those Goddamn wings kept getting in the way and he kept clawing himself in his sleep. And the bloodlust. How he quaked with cravings, how the only thing he could taste anymore was the warm slick of something freshly-killed. That was fucking new. Being a god sucked.

Pickles just wanted a sympathetic ear. Nathan was catatonic, Murderface was feral and, since the transformations, Toki and Skwisgaar had made themselves scarce. Pickles skulked the halls, his rage growing like a wildfire each passing day. Who the fuck were they, anyway? He spent the better part of a decade keeping their lives together, and now once the table turned they were too good to return to favor? Fuck them. Fuck all of them.

He found them, eventually, of course, in a forgotten corner of Mordhaus, cowering like the spineless scum they were. When he entered, Toki shuddered; Skwisgaar threw an arm across his body. Pickles extended his wings, bore his fangs, preened. They were afraid of him, and he wanted to give them a good reason for that.

“H-Hey pals?” Skwisgaar said. Pickles heard his blood quickening in his veins, the scent potent and seductive. He was so hungry. “We’s just. Hanging outs. Havings a greats times! You wants to, uh. Pals? Arounds?”

“You think yer feckin’ better than me, don’t ye?”

“No ones saids dat!” Skwisgaar inched closer to Toki.

“Ya’ve been avoiding me, cause yer scared. You left me alone. But I gaht news fer ya, dickweeds. Yer gonna be alone soon enough.”

His eyes skimmed down, slow, methodical, to the deep scratches in the stone floor, that traced a direct line to where Toki sat on his hands. He pointed an accusatory talon and grinned.

“Cause yer fuckin’ next.”


	4. Abigail, Fairy

Abigail knew she shouldn’t have engaged. He was a run-of-the-mill scumbag, one she encountered 10 times a day in one form or another. But the workday had been exhausting. She’d been nicked by so many  _sweethearts_ and  _honeys_  and  _can you handle thats_  she was drained of all chill. So when she exits the subway and sees him, squatted on the pavement, cigarette in hand, she already knows it’s coming. As she passes he eyeballs her, then draws a sharp breath.  
  
“ _Baaaaaaaby_  you’re looking  _good_. Mmf!”

Again, she shouldn’t have engaged. A shitstain like that, who couldn’t be bothered to at least customize his harassment to suit her specifically, was not worth her time. But she’d long passed her breaking point, and without looking she snaps.

“You don’t know me.”  
  
Which was a mistake. She hears him snicker, hears him groan as he pushes himself to stand.

“Oh, I  _know_  you,” he answers. She is suddenly aware of how desolate the street is, how few streetlights illuminate her path home. He trails her. She quickens her pace but it’s futile, his footsteps unwavering with a confidence he has no right possessing. He follows her six blocks, undeterred, all the while calling after her, “I  _know_ you, baby. I  _know_.”  
  
They reach her apartment, and she practically leaps up the stone steps to her front door. She does not want to turn her back to him, her keys pressed between her fingers. She waits for him to slink off, but he doesn’t. He stands at the base of her stoop like a feral cat, twitching for scraps.

“We doing this or what?” he asks. And that’s enough. 

“You don’t know me,” she says. He sneers, but before he can reply, a portal of bright, white light opens in the cement beneath him. It’s still for a moment, but then from the hole shoots out an arm, two, six, 12, 19, 27, more and more emerged and grabbing at every piece of him. He tries to shake them off, but they have him locked in. Once he’s secured, they pull. The arms drag him down, into the pit, his legs and torso vanishing with gutting efficiency. Abigail smiles. 

“You don’t know me,” she repeats. He’s screaming, clambering at the sidewalk as he sinks further and further into the cement. From her back unfurls a pair of massive, transluscent wings, flittering with polychromatic majesty. She lets him drink it in, granting a final mercy before he descends completely.

“You don’t know me at all.”


	5. Skwisgaar, Nature Spirit

Lilies were not native to this part of the world, but in that glen they were always in bloom, their fragrance hanging like lanterns. No matter the weather it was always sun-dabbled and vibrant green. He had discovered the enclave deep in the forest crescenting his home by accident. His father sent him out for firewood in the middle of hale storm. The winds were strong, the hale falling hard, and he’d become lost. Blind and cold and desperate, he stumbled over a branch, striking his head and knocking himself out.  He woke up warm, cushioned by soft earth, at the base of a dogwood tree in glorious bloom.   
  
It wasn’t easy to escape to that glen without arousing suspicion, but he did at every opportunity. The unforgiving Norwegian winter wailed across the landscape but in that glen it was eternally summer. His life at home was cruel, and his darkest moments he hungered for that place. After one particularly brutal night, he wandered in in a daze, bloodied and disoriented. The lilies seemed to stand at attention as he entered; the blossoms of the dogwood fanned open, then snapped shut. He laid his head at the tree’s knobbly roots and his eyes fell shut. The bark softened, the branches bending around him, the leaves transmuting into radiant golden hair. He opened his eyes, and met the gaze of an ethereal being, head wreathed in flowers, the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. His brow creased. He touched a wound carved into his cheek, and it instantly healed.  
  
“ _Min kärlek_.”


	6. Pickles, Wizard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a cheat whoops sorry.

Pickles slapped the black vial of polish against his palm. 

“Yannow we gaht tha best manicurists in tha world at our disposal, right?”

A massive black cherry desk divided them. Nathan grunted.

“And they can do all tha good shit. They gaht the hot rocks and towels and those fancy lotions. I ceen’t do alla that.”

“Yeah.”  
  
“So whyya–” he held the bottle up to his eyes and scrutinized it. “Wait, is this fuckin’  _Wet ‘N Wild_?!”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Pickles grinned from the side of his mouth. “I’m sahrry, I didn’t realize I was inna band with a 12 year old girl.”  
  
“It gets the job done, doesn’t it?”  
  
“You’re a  _billionaire_  Nate! You can afford quality pahlish! Get NARS, get Tahm Ford. Fuck, get  _Essie_ , that’s better than this shit.”  
  
Nathan said nothing. He only frowned, and splayed his fingers across the tabletop. With exaggerated effort, Pickles unscrewed the bottle. He dipped the brush several times, swiping off excess on the lip of the bottle, coated in a film of tacky black.  
  
“ _Anyway_ ,” he said, hunching close to Nathan’s nails. “Why ya keep askin’ me ta do this?”  
  
“Because.”  
  
“Because  _why_.” Dissatisfied with his view, Pickles climbed onto the desktop and carded his fingers in Nathan’s, painting with his free hand in quick, rapid strokes. “I’m doin’ ya a sahlid, the least ya cen do is humor me.”  
  
“I just like when you do it, okay?” Pickles glanced up to see Nathan’s frown had deepened, his gaze locked on some point beneath them. “You’re really good at it.”  
  
Pickles resumed his work. “Uh-huh.”  
  
“You’re like…a wizard.”

“Yeeah.”  
  
“But for painting nails, and nothing else.”  
  
“So like a wizard with one specific, shitty power.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Pickles gestured for Nathan to switch hands, and he did.  
  
“For the amount’a times ya fuck these up, ya should prahbably getta gel manicure.”  
  
“What’s that?”  
  
“It’s like, a manicure.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“But they make it stay lahnger with lasers.”  
  
“ _Ohhhhhhh_. Oh man. That’s cool. I want that. Can you do that?”  
  
“No way dood, it’s naht like I gaht a laser on hand–Oh wait, yes I do, it’s over there, I baught it when I was black out.”  
  
“ _We should try it_.”  
  
“Dood.”  
  
“ _ **Shoot my nails with a laser Pickles.**_ “  
  
“No way!” He mulled it over. “Well, maybe. We’ll see where tha night takes us.“   
  
“Will you do my toes after this?”   
  
“Go fuck yer self.”


	7. Charles, Phoenix

When death comes for him it isn’t as he anticipated. There’s no white light, no sense of serenity, no calm dissolution into the void. He feels the melting snow seeping through his suit jacket, a shard of glass scratching shyly against his cornea, the warble of heat from a distant fire, nothing. It is quiet, and he is empty.     

Then, something. It’s like his soul is snatched out of the air and stuffed back into him, a golem reinvigorated. But what is returned to him is not what left. The fire in the distance is now inside him, every atom shrieking as they’re ensconced in flame. The pain is otherworldly, but woven within it is a power strong enough to obliterate him, to shape the remains into a deserving vessel. He thinks he is in hell, but he is hell made manifest, fire and brimstone and gnashing of teeth, his blood running hot with others’ suffering. He is incandescent and awful. He is new.

He spends months trying to contain it, control it. Sleep evades him most nights, but when it comes he dreams of ash, of landscapes scorched and leveled, him at their center. The caverns where he waits out those long nine months are cold but he is always hot, veins searing with the rush of lava.   
  
“Why did you do this to me?” he asks in a moment of weakness, when he feels the inferno in his chest will swallow him whole. Ishnifus is at his stead, resolute and vague.  
  
“We saved you,” he replies.  
  
“From  _what_?”  
  
Ishnifus does not have answer.


	8. Pickles, Sea Monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the dumbest thing I've ever written.

Nathan tightened the ropes that bound Charles to the mast of their mighty ship. They were on route to pass the Island of Siren; the rest of the crew had already plugged up their ears with wax. Nathan regarded his captain with skepticism.  
  
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.   
  
“The Siren’s Song is the most tempting, beautiful song in the world. It promises the listener their greatest desire. Men have been driven to their doom.”  
  
“Yeah uhhhhhhhh none of that is new information.”  
  
Charles stared resolutely into the horizon. “I need to know I can defeat it, Nathan. I need to know I’m stronger.”  
  
“Okay, well, all of that is stupid, this is stupid,” he said, his index finger buried deep within his ear canal as he stuffed in the last bits of wax. “Try not to die.”  
  
Charles turned his face toward the shore and, as if fate itself had intervened, he locked eyes with The Siren. He was even more majestic than he’d been described. Tendrils of fiery red hair fell across alabaster shoulders, kissed with a smattering of dark freckles. Instead of legs, he possessed eight enormous, orange tentacles, each thick enough to crush a skull. He sat poised on a jetty, waves crashing in white frothy sprays around his entire being. He was exquisite.   
  
He smiled crookedly, and Charles tensed. The creature’s lips parted, and from its mouth emerged a sound Charles would never forget.  
  
“ ** _NYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.”  
_**   
Charles frowned. He wriggled against his post.  
  
“Nathan? This is, ah, unnecessary. I’m, I’m good.”  
  



	9. Magnus, Wizard

He was surrounded by darkness, and so he worked in darkness. He worked with instinct and without sight, thin golden threads extending from the ends of his fingers, hands weaving over his still torn-apart torso. A necromantic tailor, reckoning with his myriad mistakes with every stitch. It was agonizing, and necessary. He sought out his deepest wounds and sunk into them, not to heal, but to reseal. Perhaps this magic was dormant in him all along, available to him only in death. The ability to fix himself. To repair what could not be repaired.   
  
Surveying him was an invisible creature, its presence pointed but unthreatening, its purpose only to observe. The creature did not speak, for it did not have a mouth, but he heard its invasive question vibrating in what remained of his skull.  
  
_When your work is complete_  it asked  _what do you hope to gain?_  
  
He did not answer. He kept working. 


	10. Nathan, Dragon

Nathan saw a snake in the shallows, so he followed it.  
  
It serpentined through the marshes, an elegant silver blade slicing through the lush green growth. The ground beneath Nathan’s feet grew softer, damper, muck squishing between his toes, and then the water was at his ankles. It was daytime but the sky was dark. Trees closed in around him like two hands creating a church. The snake was fast, lengthening with every twist of its body. Size of a turtle, size of a manatee, size of a gator. The water was at his knees, at his waist, at his chest, at his neck. Nathan never broke pace. He thought he lost it in the gnarled white roots of a Mangrove tree. But then, the snake revealed itself.  
  
The snake was so big all Nathan could see was its head. A fan of scales encircled its neck like a garland of coins. Its eyes were no color, and every color. Its mouth was open, friendly and expectant. It unfurled its red, forked tongue, a welcome, as though Nathan were an honored guest. Without fear or hesitation Nathan climbed on, rising to his feet, stepping carefully over the second row of sharp white teeth. He thought it would be warm but within it was cool, like a cavern, a welcome respite from the soupy, suffocating Florida heat. The path before him narrowed. He outstretched his arms and pressed his palms to the snake’s interior walls, smooth as stone. Light faded. Light vanished. Nathan kept going, never lost, plunged himself into the black.   
  
He missed the first two weeks of school, and his mother never allowed him near the water alone again. 


	11. Pickles, Demi-God

It was Seth’s fault. Pickles knew that. He  _understood_  that.  _Seth_  was the one playing with matches.  _Seth_  was the one standing too close to the pile of dead leaves.  _Seth_  was the one who’d kicked over that old canister of gasolineand  _insisted, **insisted**_  it was empty. It was Seth’s fault. Pickles felt that truth in his bones.  
  
And yet.   
  
Decades of booze and drugs had long obliterated the specificity of their conversation, but Pickles remembered being angry. Seth flicked a still-lit match in the direction of the garage, fixed him with that smarmy half-smile. Then it happened. The blistering fury that always convulsed in his guts, that he always tried to control, to contain–it erupted from him, from his mouth and his fists and his eyeballs. His rage swallowed him in a frenzied, righteous torrent. Then everything went white.  
  
And then he was standing next to a pile of ashes, eyebrows singed, Seth’s fat finger jabbed in his direction.  
  
It was Seth’s fault. But every so often, when anger sparked within him, Pickles found himself thinking,  _and yet._


	12. Toki, Werewolf

Toki never remembered what happened while he was turned; only the aftermath. When he was turned he did not possess language, or emotion, or thought. He did not even possess himself, his mind a maelstrom of primal, amorphous rage. Afterwards, when he returned to his body sluggish and contrite, he was grateful for physical reminders. The sharp pressure of soil embedded deep beneath his nails. The sting of fresh blood on his tongue. The weighted ache in his chest, both from the pain of transformation and the guilt of horrors he could not recall.

When he came to that morning, he was in the bath. Skwisgaar’s bath. Most mornings after he’d turned, he’d awaken scrubbed clean, dressed in fresh clothes, tucked into bed with a body warming his backside. Skwisgaar always saw to that. That was not the case that morning. Dark soapy spirals encircled him. He scratched behind his ear; a tuft of fur tumbled into the murky water. Behind him he heard a mournful sigh. Toki glanced back and saw Skwisgaar at the mirror, half his face shrouded in shadow, touching his cheek with disbelieving hesitancy.  
   
“Oh, Gods,” he murmured.  
  
Toki braced on either side of the tub and, groaning with effort, lifted himself out of it. The sloshing water startled Skwisgaar. He turned into the graying morning light and then Toki saw it. The horrible three-pronged gash, still raw, slashed diagonally from temple to jaw. It would certainly scar. Toki’s heart sunk through him like lead.  
  
“I didn’ts t’inks you wakes up so soons,” Skwisgaar said as Toki climbed from the tub. He drew a circle around the mark in the air with a trembling hand. “Guess dis means Moidaface will stops callings me pretty boys, huh.”  
  
A sliver of the wolf was still within him, his senses still dialed up to their max. Had they not been, he would not have noticed how Skwisgaar flinched when he approached. He would not have felt his pulse pounding as he embraced him. He would not have heard the tremor of the lie as Skwisgaar assured him, “It’s okays.” Toki knew. Skwisgaar feared him. As he should. 


	13. Skwisgaar, Cryptid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The creature in this story is a jotunn, and is based on Miriena's Monster Skwisgaar AU, which you can read about [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15850284/chapters/36916605) and [here!](http://miriena.tumblr.com/tagged/monster%21skwis) I love it so much.

He knew the human heart intimately.  
  
He knew the pressure required to breech the chest wall. Knew how to pluck it from the rib cage like an apple. Knew its weight and texture, knew its slimy, satisfying demise when he crushed it in his fingers. Most of all, he knew its boundless capacity for anguish. Fear, despair, rage, grief, all of it in endless supply within the hollows of that infinitesimal muscle. He knew he was most powerful when gripping a still-beating heart in the palm of his hand. Sorrow as sustenance.   
  
But then he encountered something he did not know.  
  
He lay on his belly, hooves folded beneath his silvery, sinewy body. The boy sat beside him, whittling, humming a soft melody as he worked. He watched the boy, how his knife nicked at the wood with deft precision. The boy glanced up. Met his gaze, unflinching. The boy’s mouth upturned at the corners. And then, radiating from the boy’s chest, was another emotion. Not as dark as anguish, nor as all-encompassing as devotion. Something else entirely. Something that had never been gifted to him before.  
  
He flattened his palm to the boy’s chest, hungry to know this new unknowable. The sudden touch startled the boy, woodwork tumbling to the ground. The boy’s heartbeat quickened, but the boy was not afraid. The emotion from the boy intensified. Warm, and light, like the interior of the human dwellings he could look within but never enter. He felt that emotion coming from another source, from a place beyond the boy’s body, but could not pinpoint where.  

 


	14. Skwisgaar, Dragon

"Don'ts peeks!" Toki squeezed his hot chubby palms tighter to Skwisgaar's face, tight enough his eyeballs pushed back into their sockets. "Promise!"  
  
The swelling and discoloration of his allergic reaction had subsided, but Skwisgaar's ego was still substantially bruised after the **Advanced Fast Hand Wizard Master Class** fiasco. Sure, he'd made a buttload of money. And yeah, he was being lauded by the masses for _fundamentally reinventing everything we know about guitar playing_. But as far as he was concerned the special hadn't met his _specific_ _, astronomically high_ expectations, and so it was a failure. He spent more time than required in the medical wing, stifling his disappointment and sensitivity. Upon his release Toki announced he had a _surprise_ for him, and begged, _begged_ him to come see it.  
  
Vulnerability and boredom got the best of Skwisgaar, and so he agreed.  
  
He knew they were near a body of water: The air carried the rhythmic calls of seagulls and the faintest whiff of salt. The ground became softer beneath his boots, and Toki's hips kept brushing against the backs of his thighs as they shuffled along. Abruptly, they stopped, and Toki released him.  
  
"Okays! Looks!"  
  
Squinting to adjust to the sunlight, Skwisgaar saw before him a dock, its white wood boards hanging over a gleaming lake. Floating in the water were paddle boats shaped like various animals. Mostly birds. Swans, ducks, flamingos. Stupid. Not worth the trip. He sneered, readying a biting remark, when Toki grabbed him by the chin and twisted his neck so he could view the _actual_ reason he brought him here. A different paddle boat. Custom made. Scaled. Fanged. Ferocious. Green.  
  
"Ams dat a...?"  
  
"It's a dragons!" Toki chirped, seizing his arm and yanking him in its direction. "You saids you wanted ones, so I gots you ones! You likes it?"  
  
Having spent the better part of the last week crying, Skwisgaar was unsurprised when he felt himself starting again. But these tears weren't from stress, or humiliation, or frustration. They weren't from anything negative at all.  
  
Toki grinned, wiping at his cheek with the back of his hand, and guided Skwisgaar gently into the boat.  
  
"You're so _fucking lames_ ," Skwisgaar sobbed.  
  
"I knows."  
  
"I amn'ts doesing any paddlings."  
  
"I knows, baby."

### 


	15. Pickles, Mermaid

Nathan stood at the hot tub’s edge, massaging his temples with the ends of his fingers. “Run it by me one more time."  
  
“S’like I toldja, Nate,” Pickles slurred, clambering for his pina colada, “I went down ta the ol’ abandoned docks where all those sailors disappeared ta get, y’know, hammered, and there was this lady in the water, like that M. Night Shyamalan movie–”  
  
“ _Lady in the Water_?”  
  
“ _Tha Happening_.”  
  
“ **What**.”  
  
“–and I asked her if she partied, and she said somethin’ in an ancient language lost to humanity fer thousands of years, which I took assa no, yadda yadda yadda I haffa tail now.”  
  
Water sloshed across the tile as Pickles hefted his massive orange tail out from underneath the frothy surface. It flopped to the floor in shimmering, scaley brilliance. Nathan groaned.  
  
“We have a show in _half an hour_ Pickles. How are you gonna play drums _without legs_?”  
  
Pickles stretched his tongue to its full length as he tried, and failed, to locate the straw of his beverage.  
  
“Nate, no, Nate, lissen, Nathan, s’fine Nathan, Nathan s’fine, s’only a tail when I geddit whet.”  
  
Nathan clenched his hands into fists and buried his knuckles in his eye sockets.  
  
“So,” he said, slowly, as though every word was a puncture wound, “if you only have a tail when you get wet. Why. Did you. **Get in the hot tub**.”  
  
“C’mahn, dood, my drink was ahn the other side a’da hot tub! What wusseye supposed ta do? Walk around ta get it?”  
  
“ _ **That’s exactly what you should have done**_.”  
  
“Oh, heh, yer right, my beed. Hey, issit weird I’m in tha mood for sushi?”  
  
“ _ **HHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH–**_ “


End file.
